US Interior Dept looks to Western energy resources
© 2001 Reuters
June 22, 2001
Story by Chris Baltimore
WASHINGTON - Amid broad opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the Interior Department is taking a closer look at untapped oil and gas reserves in Western states, a department official said yesterday.
"Within the continental United States, the western part of the country seems the most prospective," Chip Groat, director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), said at a briefing for lawmakers and congressional aides.
Western states like Wyoming, Utah and Nevada have attractive reserves, he said. However, many doubt the Bush administration will have any luck winning rights - as it would like - to sanction energy exploration on national monument lands in the West.
Emphasis in exploration is also shifting toward new forms of energy like geothermal power, or coalbed methane - a form of natural gas that is dissolved in water or coal and must be specially extracted.
"One of the hottest plays will be for coalbed methane," Groat said. Potential coalbed methane sites include the Green River Basin in Colorado and the San Juan Basin in New Mexico, he said.
The USGS, the scientific research arm of the Interior Department, gauges the country's onshore oil and gas reserves. Another agency, the Mineral Management Service, oversees offshore reserves such as the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico.
Both agencies within the Interior Department have come into the spotlight since the Bush administration's proposed energy plan ordered a speed-up in an ongoing inventory of oil and gas reserves on federal land.
The Interior Department makes official estimates for unproven oil and gas reserves - those deposits that have been discovered but not scientifically quantified.
USGS will have no say in decisions to drill in politically sensitive areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or offshore Florida. But administration officials will use USGS data to determine potential sites.
"Good policies depend on credible assessments of energy resources," Groat said.
USGS recently identified several national monuments with possible oil and gas reserves, including the Grand Staircase Escalante monument in Utah.
But with Bush's approval rating on environmental and energy issues lagging, it would be "political suicide" for him to advocate such steps, said an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Alaskan refuge could hold enough oil to meet 25 percent of the nation's energy needs for two decades and is a key part of the Republican energy plan, according to a May estimate by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. But the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate is expected to block any attempt to open the refuge to drilling.